Football Manager 2010 SG talk

[Ichabod]

Queens Park are historically an amateur team (and also one of the founding members of the FA Cup and Scottish FA Cup. They also founded international football. You should read up on them), and have gone on record as saying that they'll never give up Amateur Status. The SFA had to work in special rules for them as regards the league. There are a few other clubs dotted around the place, most famously Corinthian-Casuals (successor to the original Corinthians and another early amateur club The Casuals), and a few playing in Belgium. Any club that is amateur in ethos will be coded to never turn professional in the game. It does not affect reputation gains, but does affect the level of players you can attract (due to not paying them).

Boreham are semi-pro only due to the financial circumstances of their league position, i.e. they can't afford to pay more to go full-time. They will change their status as their position and players improve.

That's certainly very interesting. I wonder if anyone managed some good results with Queens Park in Fm2011. Surely sound like a good challenge.


I have a nice thing to show from my game. I hope I did it right to show it to you. If you can, look at the second goal of Boreham Wood in this game. It's hilarious. Best cross ever!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21249278/Dartfor...20Wood.pkm

[Katon]

Looking at the save, I think our squad is somewhat imbalanced in the middle. We really have only one natural winger, and too many central midfielders. We could do with getting in some wingers and letting go of a few of the less useful central players. Problem is most of the wingers available/realistic targets are not that great. There are some decent ones but no real "wow" buys. Our strikers are lacking in goals so I'll try to fix that around a bit.

Gurerro also is very leary of singing a new contract, he outright refused a slight raise with big bonuses, so I'll probably sell him. I'm confident of a c.£5m fee, barring a foreign club being free with the Bosman signing-on. Either way I don't think he'll be here in June.

And to cap it off, I see our wingers and Trequartista are all support. I'd prefer to pump these to attacking and also (if things go well) go with a shorter, more free and expressive game plan too. The diamond still seems the best formation, I just think we have enough in the team to be able to loosen out a bit (definitely at this level) and go for a more open style of game.

Do you think it would be worth trying a narrower diamond? On the one hand, that leaves Alcock out in the cold, and if Guerrero's sold then he seems like the most talented midfielder in the squad from my brief survey. On the other hand, the squad has better depth at central midfield and, frankly, I've always found it's easier to shop for. Plus the only striker in the squad who's really a great aerial target is Bardsen, and he doesn't seem to have been doing anything with the wingers' crosses so far.

Random possible transfer targets from a brief glance through the market -

Giannis Livathinos: 33-year-old whose contract expires at the end of December; no stamina, but he should be able to do a job at attacking mid or out wide until he needs to be taken off. Worth keeping in mind if we want a cheap short-term replacement for Guerrero.

Kylian Vuillemin: Man City attacking mid prospect; if they wind up bidding on Guerrero, TRY TO GET AN EXCHANGE INVOLVING HIM. Otherwise no chance they'll sell. Scout thinks he would be interested, but draw a lot of wages.

John Hopkinson: pacy central mid prospect, currently at Tottenham; not up to providing anything more than depth at the moment, but his contract expires at the end of the season, and if he doesn't sign a new one I'd certainly take him on a free.

Aron Asgeirsson: Helsingborg CM; very talented, and our best scout rates him as having four-star potential ("leading Premiership midfielder"); recently moved to Helsingborg, so he's expensive and wouldn't be able to play for us til next season. Not a target for January, but keep an eye on him.

All the wingers I saw on the market were about the same level as our current incumbents, in their thirties (and hence unlikely to stay Premiership-level for long), or both; Livathinos was the pick of the geezers.

[Brian Shanahan]

I think narrowing the diamond seems to be the stronger option. I'll play later on this evening, and try to blast through the 6 months by tomorrow.

As regards signings, there isn't much to play around with where we need the bodies. Even at striker (where IMO we're slightly lacking in quality) there's not much avaliable that's a realistic target.

[Twinkletoes89]

I thought we had already narrowed the diamond but I guess not! That system was my first choice with the lack of wide players.

I think our strikers are pretty good quality, they may just need their instructions tweaking slightly to get them firing - especially Bardsen & Jose.

[Brian Shanahan]

I thought we had already narrowed the diamond but I guess not! That system was my first choice with the lack of wide players.

I think our strikers are pretty good quality, they may just need their instructions tweaking slightly to get them firing - especially Bardsen & Jose.

We've 2 or 3 good strikers, but they all play much the same way. And some of the back-up at the club are frankly not good at all. If I can I'll probably clear some of the worse players out over Christmas and then see about replacements.

[Brian Shanahan]

OK played the January games, the results have been mostly good except for one massive carcrash of a goal away to Watford.

First though some house cleaning

Sales:
I got rid of Gurrero for £4.1m, straight up, no clauses

I also managed to pick up near another million for Varlet, Fagan, Mellor and Yilmaz. Some of these were decent (Varlet, Yilmaz) but weren't getting games due to HG restrictions.

I also successfully argued for better youth facilities and a feeder, unfortunately the club didn't look too hard for the feeder (probably because I accidentally asked for a WP one).

Matty Alcock (AMR) got prissy with me after issuing a hands off warning. I said I wanted him to help grow the club. He asked for a transfer I said OK and slapped a £40m tag on him. Either he'll come down off his fit in a month or we'll sell him in the summer.

I also sold a clause on a player gone a few years as he's rotting in the Man City reserves for 3 years. We lost £400k if he ever plays for them but he won't.

Purchases:

Phillips I got because I thought we needed quality cover (initially at DL but Beveridge is playing a stormer there) and he's straight into the first team. Long because he is good, was cheap, and I didn't think too much of the cover. Jurmin will be a quality AMC in a few years, couldn't get a buy in clause but took him anyway (he'll cover the position in case of injuries).

Matches:

Huddersfield Away 1-1
Frankly we should have won with the chances we spurned, missed to good ones. But overall a draw was fair. We were short quite a few due to lack of fitness, so I was happy here.

Wigan Away 1-1
On the balance of play a draw was fair. Our goal was literally from nowhere, I thought it was wide until I noticed a knot of players in red running to the half-way line. For their equaliser it was a case of our backs being badly out of position for a wide pass.

Southend Cup 1-0
We won with an early headed goal from Bardsen. Should have killed them shots were 23-7.

Boro Home 4-1
Hat-trick hero José! We got an early goal then pegged back soon after. I thought we would collapse from brittle confidence, but José and Beveridge just destroyed them in the second half.

Watford away 2-2
Andreson gave a way a stupid goal, by coming for a cross (weak one at that) and dropping it at the feet of Tuck We got two from Own goals and were cruising until:

The hairdryer came out at full time let me tell you.

Barnsley Home 3-0
Easy game; OG no. 3 and Greene in the first half, Ross (on for Greene) in the second half. Barnsley had three shots all game, no threat.


And finally some tactics

Basically what I did was convert the two wingers to CMs (one a normal CM the other a Box-to-Box), and I gave the whole team a slightly more attacking philosophy (control instead of balanced) and asked them to play shorter more open football. It seems to be working so far.

As regards the strikers I've Bardsen as a target man, and José as an advanced forward. It is working so far.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm sorry but I just got sick of the game. The team is too mentally imbalanced. One bad loss made for about a months bad results (against far weaker teams). It is also most probably the reason why they finished 20th last year.

Honestly the squad should be good enough to be walking the league, but they cannot keep it together long enough to get a decent series of results, and every time someone else messes up we mess up harder.

I'm sorry but the aggrovation of doing everything but nothing working is getting to me too much. A few more games and I'd be rage quitting and reloading every non-win.

The most recent save.

[Mist]

Wow, now that's one weird tactic you have going in that save :]

I'll give the game a whirl to check what I can do out of curiosity.

[Ichabod]

So, where do we go from here?

Can you get the save, TT? Should I finish the season so we can start fresh from a new one? Maybe look for another club?

We aren't really supposed to get promoted/be the champion every year, so I don't mind if we don't end in a good league position. I certainly didn't lay the foundations for a good year in my turnset, so I kind of saw it coming.

[Brian Shanahan]

So, where do we go from here?

Can you get the save, TT? Should I finish the season so we can start fresh from a new one? Maybe look for another club?

We aren't really supposed to get promoted/be the champion every year, so I don't mind if we don't end in a good league position. I certainly didn't lay the foundations for a good year in my turnset, so I kind of saw it coming.

Problem for me was that we had a team that had a very strong chance of getting promoted automatically, and it frustrated the hell out of me that they stumbled all too often. That frustration was on the verge of stumbling into cheating and I didn't wan't to destroy the integrity of the game. With a single player game, I'd just have dropped it for two weeks and came back when more settled but that isn't an option in an SG.